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Proposed Names

Recognized by sight: Aka Dyemaker’s Puffball. By “tranplanting” this, you may well have “cultivated” it, Dave. It is mycorrhizal with many many trees and shrubs, especially oaks and pines. In my experience it really likes birch too.

Proposed Names

Recognized by sight: Aka Dyemaker’s Puffball. By “tranplanting” this, you may well have “cultivated” it, Dave. It is mycorrhizal with many many trees and shrubs, especially oaks and pines. In my experience it really likes birch too.

At least in my area, where it seems to be pretty much everywhere the Bretz floods covered. (The Bretz floods covered much of the PNW, and created the Columbia River Gorge.) Seems to like poor soils, rocky or gravel areas (less common in sand) and widespread. Ease of cultivation is likely a reason for that.

While I haven’t found it near Forsythia I wouldn’t put it past any mycorrhizal host. At least 35 known mycorrhizal associates. (Make that 36: don’t think anyone has found it with Forsythia before.) One website I found suggests 192 spores will start a new mycelium. Average sporocarp production exceeds that by several exponential factors.

Never considered the relationship/appearance to Scleroderma before, but yes, there’s that as well. Pisolithus has peridioles which degrade from the top downward, and stain everything quickly. The presence of peridioles quickly separates it from Scleroderma. Plus Scleroderma don’t stain everything they touch.

Most Pisolithus associate with eucalypts and acacias. Not many of those species in the US, at least that aren’t introduced.

By the time I find Pisolithus, the surface is usually well degraded/eroded, lending support for the common name of Dead Man’s Foot. Since you can’t see the peridioles without either slicing or breaking the sporocarp, and is poisonous, many potential collectors don’t.

Pisolithus are known to break down some persistent toxic wastes. The mycorrhizae produced can saturate a single cubic inch of soil with more than a mile of mycelium, most of which is invisible to the naked eye.